CalMHSA
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Empower Tehama
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Mid-Atlantic Broadband
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SHPE
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CalMHSA serves California counties and cities in the dynamic delivery of mental health and supportive services. A nationally recognized leader, CalMHSA inspires the service community through its commitment to results and values. Successful statewide and regional programs enable the voice of many to be heard.
As an on-going efficient delivery mechanism for statewide and other California mental health projects, a central component of CalMHSA's vision is to continually promote systems and services arising from a commitment to community mental health, and to the values of the California Mental Health Services Act.
Solsken PR with Runyon Saltzman Einhorn (RSE) launched a 3-year campaign aimed at reducing mental health disparities among underserved Southeast Asian communities in California. The marketing initiative was tailored for the Hmong, Cambodian and Lao communities. Our team also developed tools for the Mien communities.
Aimed at educating the Hmong, Cambodian and Lao communities about mental health, Solsken developed a culturally appropriate approach to reaching these communities in ways that resonate with them. This included:
In Southeast Asian communities, mental health is often taboo. In fact, there is not an equivalent term among these communities. Our campaign led to opening discussions about mental health in an effort to reduce mental health stigma and discrimination and break the cycle of myths about mental health especially when the communities have high rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and where inter-generational conflicts exist.
Empower Tehama, formerly Alternatives to Violence, was founded in 1994 as a grass roots response to women and children hoping to escape abusive relationships. At the time of its inception, the name Alternatives to Violence concisely captured the organization's services. Since then, the organization's services have expanded to encompass additional programs that target audiences that find the name Alternatives to Violence a barrier to participation due to the stigma associated with violence.
To better serve the community of Tehama County while continuing to expand and attract new audiences to their services and programs, Alternatives to Violence needed a new name and brand identity that would better encompass their programs and services and enable growth.
Solsken was asked to develop a new organization name and brand identity that would propel the organization forward. Alternative to Violence's new name and brand identity must be inclusive of all audiences, strongly resonate with the community of Tehama County, capture the organization's current and future services, and position the organization for future growth.
To understand the organization, its needs and the community it serves, Solsken met with key staff, board members and community leaders and conducted one-on-one interviews. Solsken also conducted data mining and independent research sessions to collect information on names that would resonate with the industry and diverse audiences, pulling test subjects who are both familiar and unfamiliar with the types of services offered by the organization. The name Empower Tehama was developed and emerged victorious.
However, selecting a new name for the organization alone was not enough. To accompany the new name, Solsken also developed a new brand identity to compliment the organization's mission and enable it to expand and reach new audiences.
Solsken worked closely with the client to officially launch their new name, Empower Tehama. Empower Tehama kicked off their rebranding with a wine reception on March 22, 2018. To facilitate this rebranding launch event, Solsken:
On March 22, 2018, Alternatives to Violence officially rebranded to Empower Tehama with a ribbon-cutting launch event, attended by 100 key community leaders, board members and organization supporters. The rebrand garnered local media attention with features on KRCR News Channel ABC 7 and Red Bluff Daily News as well as support in 167 national outlets reaching a potential audience of 12.2 million.
Domestic violence, specifically victims who suffer abuse, seldom discuss their experiences publicly. There is a distinct stigma associated becoming a victim and the topic, in most circles, is regarded as taboo. By researching, utilizing tried-and-true marketing tactics and spending time with the organization to uniquely identify their wants and needs, Solsken successfully developed and delivered the ideal name and brand identity to propel the organization forward.
By changing the organization name from Alternatives to Violence to Empower Tehama, Solsken successfully addressed the client's concerns by removing the implicit association with violence and victimization and replacing it with a positive, uplifting association that embraces the community. Empower Tehama is inclusive, uplifting and welcoming to all audiences in Tehama County.
Today, nearly seven in 10 teachers across the United States assign homework and research requiring broadband access, yet an estimated 5 million households with school-age children in the U.S. are faced with limited or nonexistent broadband connectivity. These students are often unable to access the tools they need to complete assignments, prohibiting them from succeeding in school and developing the skills they need to enter today's workforce. These students are at a significant disadvantage due to this "homework gap," which creates an uneven playing field for their future educational and economic prospects. This homework gap is an urgent local and national problem that is growing.
Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities and Microsoft partnered with local school districts in rural southern Virginia to create and launch an innovative pilot program - the TV White Space Homework Network - to help close the homework gap in Virginia. The first and largest initiative of its kind in the United States, this pilot program is designed to deliver in-home broadband internet access to thousands of students living in rural southern Virginia at no cost to their families. The pilot program currently runs in two counties - Charlotte and Halifax - where an estimated 50 percent of students currently lack broadband access at home.
The TV White Space Homework Network launched in 2017 and has already connected the first 100 homes; the program continues to grow with plans to connect 1,000 homes in 2018.
Solsken led communications and outreach for the TV White Space Homework Network project. The first initiative of its kind in the United States, Solsken was tasked with favorably positioning this project, developing a compelling narrative, and sharing the impact of this project with the world.
As the first project in a larger, national rollout, Solsken was asked to localize outreach efforts to regional media, sharing the initial success of the southern Virginia pilot project with local media only. This localized coverage would promote the project and the initial success, but enable more expansive, compelling coverage as the project scales.
To tell the story, Solsken:
As a result of Solsken's initial outreach efforts, the launch of the TV White Space Homework Network garnered local coverage and was also highlighted nationally in 17 news outlets including: WSET, The Charlotte Gazette, News & Record, RCR Wireless News, Digital Trends, TelecomPaper and Bloomberg Government.
Shortly following the initial launch, southern Virginia's TV White Space Homework Network garnered additional coverage as the pilot program for Microsoft's larger, national Rural Broadband Initiative. This second wave of coverage garnered placement in 231 outlets including: Associated Press, Axios, Bloomberg, CNET, Fortune, GeekWire, International Business Times, The New York Times, NPR, Politico, Recode, Seattle Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and ZDNet.
Additional coverage is anticipated in 2018 as the next milestone is reached.
The TV White Space Homework Network in southern Virginia is a national pilot program and the first step in delivering a solution to help close the homework gap in the United States. The program's success helped set the stage for Microsoft's larger, national Rural Airband Initiative rollout. Having successfully launched in Virginia, Microsoft will replicate this program across the country, launching an additional 11 Homework Gap projects in 11 additional states in this next year.
The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) provides an essential value to the nation, empowering the Hispanic community with awareness, access, support and development in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
SHPE's national conference is the organization's key opportunity to message publicly SHPE's value to the world, highlighting the positive impacts the organization has made to the community while preparing existing members to recruit new members. Moreover, the national conference provides SHPE the opportunity to demonstrate its leadership in STEM.
SHPE has been a client of Solsken's since 2012.
Solsken provides a range of communications and marketing services to SHPE. Our team has supported with fundraising, public relations, social media and event promotion. The largest component of our contract has been to support with the national conference, which runs annually for a week in locations across the U.S.
The primary objectives of our communications services are:
Working closely with SHPE's Events & Marketing team we develop a customized approach to ensure more than 5,000 Latino STEM students and professional converge for the largest Latino technical conference in the nation. This has included a wide range of tactics including instituting an email marketing campaign, through aggressive public relations and media relations support, social media and development of videos.
Based on Solsken's approach to marketing SHPE's national conference, we supported SHPE by driving more than 5,000 registrants to the national conference year after year. Our e-mail campaigns have produced up to a 42.2% open rate resulting in 9.5% click through, much higher than industry average. Solsken supported SHPE with an email campaign. Results indicated that on average, 30% of recipients saw the message being promoted.
Solsken's support with SHPE's social media also saw a jump in activity. For instance in 2013, Facebook averaged a reach of 400-900 reach per post. Conference events reached stakeholders in the thousands; such as the Extreme Engineering video reached 2,000, Career Fair Ribbon Cutting 1,400. Twitter was used throughout the conference and the #SHPE2013 along generated 1,258 tweets, October 31, 2013 was the height of activity with 364 tweets.
Through the use of marketing tactics that resonates with the target audience, and spending the time to uniquely identify what the audience wants us to serve them, we were able to adapt our e-blast campaign and social media to drive effective results year after year.